A real Man of God Malice in Wonderland a real man of god

ONE

ON

ONE

CLARKSVILLE, Tenn.

1992


President Bush took on his opponent in a sweltering gymnasium yesterday, borrowing from the vernacular of the playground in challenging Bill Clinton to a little one on one: a series of televised debates.

"Let's get it on," Bush said, yanking off his eyeglasses, as the partisan crowd of more than 9,500 roared its approval.

Bush, making a campaign stop at Dave Aaron Arena on the campus of Austin Peay State University, proposed four debates on consecutive Sundays, beginning Oct. 11.

Clinton quickly issued a counterproposal that he and Bush debate this Sunday and on Thursday, Oct. 15 -- dates already set by a bipartisan commission -- and that the two campaigns then work out the details for additional sessions.

The format of the debates has been a sticking point, with Clinton pressing for a single moderator instead of a traditional panel of questioners.

Bush said yesterday he would agree to two debates of each kind.

The president also invited Ross Perot to join the debates "if he enters the race."

"We had a date this Sunday, I accepted it," Clinton said. " . . . The dates were very carefully selected to avoid the World Series conflicts. And if you do just Sunday debates you run into that."

Clinton insisted that negotiations be conducted through a bipartisan debate commission, but Bush said he wanted direct negotiations with the Clinton campaign.

The first three Sunday night debates proposed by Bush could conflict with televised coverage of the baseball playoff and World Series games.

Bush's proposal was seen as a high-stakes bid to revive his political fortunes. Public opinion polls for the last two months consistently have shown Bush trailing Clinton, with the president rarely getting more than 40 percent of the vote.

"He's got to move off this 40-42 percent and he doesn't have many other opportunities besides the debates," said public opinion specialist Karlyn Keene with the American Enterprise Institute.

Keene said surveys show that 45 percent of swing voters say the debates could determine how they vote this year.

Some 44 million viewers watched each of the two 1988 presidential debates.

Bush's move came just moments after the bipartisan Commission on Presidential Debates canceled Sunday's scheduled face-offs between Bush and Clinton after the Bush campaign once again refused to agree to the debate terms proposed by the panel.

It was the third time this month the commission had to cancel a planned debate.

The panel, headed by the former chairmen of the Republican and Democratic parties, had proposed three presidential debates and one vice presidential debate, all with a single moderator. In addition to the presidential debates, Bush proposed at least two between their running mates.

Four presidential debates would be the most since Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter debated four times in 1976. There were two presidential debates in 1984 and 1988 and one presidential debate in 1980.

Bush's proposal also would mean that the final debate would be held less than 48 hours before Election Day -- the latest date ever for a nationally televised debate.


SATURDAY

NIGHT

FEVER
LEXINGTON

1992

Arolled-up bath towel lying at the bottom of the front door keeps the cold out of Teresa Jackson's house. Keeping trouble at bay isn't as easy.

Trouble comes in so many forms. Sometimes it knocks politely and speaks in familiar tones when it asks for your son. "Mom, I'll be back," Jackson's son, Will Carter, told her that night as he left with his friends.

"It was just like any other Saturday night," Jackson says, "except on that Saturday night, he didn't come back home."

Carter, 16, died Oct. 3 after a bullet pierced his chest. Police say he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, an innocent bystander caught in deadly crossfire when two other teen-agers began shooting at each other.

Jackson gets angry sometimes thinking about what parents are up against. She could not sleep well after attending Tuesday's meeting at the Carver Center, where 300 adults and teen-agers discussed ways of stopping violence on city streets.

Jackson stood up at the meeting and called on other parents to "stick together and find out where these kids are getting the guns from and who is selling them."

Hours later, alone in the middle of the night, she picked up pen and paper and finished her plea:

"Whoever it is," she wrote, "they need to be put in jail."

Carter was the third victim of violence on Lexington's north side since mid-June; he was the second to die. Police have formed a special task force to patrol an area bounded by Martin Luther King Boulevard, Broadway and Fourth and Seventh streets. Residents there say drugs, alcohol and bands of gun-toting teen-agers rule.

The volatile area is just around the corner and down the street from the little pink house on Smith Street where Carter lived with his mother. But Jackson said violence has not been a problem on Smith Street, a sleepy neighborhood of small, frame houses.

"Everybody in this area was mostly family," she says. "They treated you like family in a way."

Will Rankin Carter does not seem to fit the image of someone who might be expected to meet an untimely end on the streets.

He watched soap operas with his mother, lived in a house with ceramic squirrels on the coffee table, put bugs on girls, loved his niece and bought lollipops for the elderly woman across the street.

"I tried to raise him as good as I possibly could," Jackson says.

Why Carter was in the wrong place at the wrong time is unclear. Police are not talking about the investigation, even to Carter's family. "They said they wouldn't tell because they didn't want anything to get out that might hurt the case," Jackson said.

Contrary to what many residents say, police have said the shooting was not gang-related. Although Carter knows little about what happened -- "Only thing to do now is just stay home and try to figure out why and keep hoping something comes out of it," she says -- her mind has been set at ease by the conclusions she has drawn from what police, friends and strangers have told her.

"I feel really good to know it wasn't no gangs or drugs.

"I'm a proud momma to know he wasn't in trouble a day in his life."

Carter kept other, younger kids out of trouble, playing football with them in the middle of Smith Street. In fact, Carter was something of a homebody, she says. He watched "All My Children" faithfully and bet with his mother on televised basketball games.

"If you lose, you get to do dishes for a week," she would say.

"He was just like my little man of the house," Jackson says. "He took care of both of us. Every time something broke down in the house, we'd say, 'Wii-iill.' "

Carter, a student at Lafayette High School, took pride in his mechanical know-how -- "I got a brain on me," he would say, grinning -- and planned to attend vocational school after graduating, Jackson says. He wanted to get a job fixing cars. His neighbors would be good references, if need be.

"Anything with a motor to it, he loves working on it," Jackson says.

Three weeks before the shooting, Carter went to Cincinnati to look for work and live with his sister, whose 8-month-old baby, Telena, was his only niece.

"This is how you make Miss T mad!" he'd say in that big voice, setting her off. He loved that baby.

But he got homesick and returned to Lexington on Oct. 12, turning up unexpectedly on his mother's porch on what would turn out to be the last full day of his life.

The next night, Carter lay on the floor at his mother's feet watching television when there came a knock at the door. He left with some friends.

Jackson was still watching the same movie when she heard another knock at the door. "Miss T, Will's been shot," they said.

After seeing her son on a stretcher, hearing him pronounced dead and listening to the priest and coroner at the hospital, Jackson asked to go home.

She had to get back to her 13-year-old son, David Jackson.

"I don't feel hatred toward the boy that did it," she says, "I don't feel anger, I don't feel revenge. I feel sorry for those kids' mothers that's got to be there to see their kids tried for this."

David, chomping on a wad of gum, asks her: "Why you feel sorry for them?"

Does she also feel sorry for the guys who did it?

Yes, she says.

David shakes his head. "I can't feel sorry for them," he says.

STEALING

TIME

LEXINGTON

1992


For the most part, the only people Mack Benjamin lets into his living room are folks on NBC: Sam and Rebecca, McKenzie and Brackman, Procter & Gamble.

But the woman who invaded his home in March was from the real world, where bricks leave scars and the effects of violent crime last much longer than prime time.

Benjamin, 92, and his wife, Ella, 86, were victims in a series of beatings and robberies that were resolved late last month when a Lexington woman pleaded guilty to preying on elderly residents of the city's north side. Lucinda Cotton, 19, admitted forcing her way into four homes in which she beat and robbed people ranging in age from 82 to 93.

A Lexington man, Wallace Bixler, 25, pleaded guilty in three of the four cases.

Their crime, called "home invasion," is common in the Northeast, says Fayette County Commonwealth's Attorney Ray Larson. But it is unusual for Lexington, says police Sgt. Dan Gibbons: a young couple forcing their way into the homes of elderly residents and brutalizing them.

The commonwealth has recommended a total of 195 years in prison for Cotton and Bixler.

Why? Were lives taken?

In a way, Larson says.

"The real tragedy of this kind of case is what it's done to people who at their age were still living independently," Larson says.

Only two of the five victims still live on their own. The three others have moved in with relatives or friends since the robberies because they are too frightened to stay in their homes. Ella Benjamin went straight to her sister's house from the hospital, leaving Mack to live alone in their house.

"These people's lives have been completely disrupted," Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Sally Manning says.

Life as the victims knew it for almost a century is over, says Tami Meer, a social worker at the University of Kentucky's Sanders-Brown Center on Aging.

Meeting up with violence in their homes is especially hard on older people, Meer says. "They're not like a young person where they could think about moving," she says. "All the options open to most people probably aren't open to them."

It is not uncommon for them to surrender their treasured independence afterward, she says. Some go to retirement homes.

This, then, is what Lucinda Cotton and Wallace Bixler really took away from 92-year-old Chester Warden when they made off with his antique gun and his silver Eisenhower coins.

They took away his world.

Cotton has pleaded guilty to five counts of first-degree robbery, three counts of first-degree burglary and one count of second-degree burglary. The prosecution has recommended 85 years in prison -- 10 on each robbery and first-degree burglary charge and five on the second-degree burglary.

Final sentencing will be Sept. 4. The judge could rule that the sentences should run simultaneously or one right after the other.

Bixler has pleaded guilty to three counts of first-degree robbery and three of first-degree burglary. The prosecution has recommended 110 years because Bixler, who was convicted in 1990 of trafficking in cocaine, is a persistent felony offender, Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Kathy Walton said.

Bixler also will be sentenced Sept. 4.

Cotton's and Bixler's plea bargains were hardly bargains for them, prosecutors say. Because Cotton had confessed in detail, the two had little with which to negotiate, Larson says.

"My opinion is this is really a violent and hateful crime against some of the most vulnerable people in our community," Larson said.

Defense attorneys for Cotton and Bixler could not be reached.

Cotton and Bixler, also known as "Tiny," struck from March 4 to 9 in an area north of downtown Lexington.

It started at 5 p.m. March 4, when Bixler showed up at 93-year-old Jerry Covington's house, supposedly to fix the phones. He fixed them by yanking them out of the walls.

Bixler left, but less than three hours later, Cotton appeared. She knocked on the door.

"What do you want?" Covington said. "I don't know you."

Cotton asked to use the phone.

"I ain't got no phone," Covington told her.

Cotton asked to use the bathroom.

Covington, a retired construction worker, cracked the door, and Cotton stormed in.

She grabbed a shotgun from Covington, pushed him down and shoved the barrel into his chest, demanding money.

Cotton and Bixler got a gold necklace and $60 Covington had hidden under his mattress. Too frightened to sleep and unable to phone for help, Covington sat up the rest of the night with his cane propped up next to him for protection, Manning said.

"I'm 93 years old, and that's the first time anything's ever happened to me," Covington says. He has changed all his locks -- something he didn't think he would have to do at such a late date.

On March 5, Cotton and Bixler visited Eutoka Ward, 82, a retired Fayette County teacher. They tied her up and beat her. They offered her a seat, only to pull the chair out from beneath her when she tried to sit down. Then they left with a Seth-Thomas clock.

On March 7, they called on Chester Warden, 92, a retired cook at the old Lafayette Hotel. And two days later, Cotton alone pushed her way into the Benjamins' house. "That sucker just walked in," Mack says.

Blood spattered the walls as she beat Mack and Ella with a brick. She also beat them with a phone, staining the five and six keys red with their blood.

And when she left, she left with nothing more or less than the lives they had known for so long.

Now Mack only answers the door with his pistol. He keeps it under a chair in the living room by day. It lies there as he watches television. At night, he sleeps with the gun. It is his only companion.

Ella is too scared to come home.

A

MOTHER-

DAUGHTER

STORY

LEXINGTON

1992


Brenda Wilson would give anything to know her daughter's secret.

It wouldn't be fair if this thing stood between them forever. Wilson felt so close to earning her daughter's confidence again, to mending the old mother-daughter rift that seems inevitable during the teen years. The mother was finally coming to terms with how her daughter lived.

Now she must try to understand how she died.

Letha Corinne Rutherford was 18 when she disappeared Dec. 17. Her remains were found April 14 in an illegal dump just 150 feet from the back of her home on Dry Branch Road in rural Fayette County.

Everybody is convinced the Lexington teen-ager was murdered. But the police have been unable to solve the case because they don't know what caused Letha's death -- let alone who.

Kentucky's forensic anthropologist, Dr. David Wolf, was called in to examine the bones. But Wolf, who was gravely ill, died in July of cancer before he could do extensive testing or write up his preliminary findings.

As for Letha, whose mother has been unable to afford a gravestone, her remains lie in Grave D at Hillcrest Cemetery in Lexington -- an unmarked patch of land covered with long grass and dead leaves.

Her killer's secret seems safe with the dead, but Brenda Wilson is not ready to let bygones be bygones.

Wilson, a strawberry blonde with sad blue eyes and a soft voice, wants her daughter's remains exhumed and re-examined so the stalled investigation might progress.

Tennessee's forensic anthropologist, William M. Bass of Knoxville, has agreed to take the case at no cost. The snag: Wilson cannot afford to pay the funeral home to have her daughter exhumed.

"We don't have any money. I'll sell everything I have that's valuable to do it," Wilson says, her voice tightening.

A stiff gust of wind rushes past the storm door of her apartment in east Lexington.

"That's what's killing me the most, is just not knowing. And the person who did this thing is sitting there thinking, 'I got away with it.' "

Wilson, who found herself excluded from her rebellious daughter's life for more than two years, feels shut out of Rutherford's death, too.

She does not think police have kept her apprised of their investigation. She learned her daughter's remains had been found when she saw it on the evening news.

"I feel like the police department, they feel like because we were poor people and we didn't have anything that I'm not even a parent," she says.

"I'm her mother, and I have the right to know things."

Wilson says she has a gut feeling that Bass, whom she called after seeing him profiled on "48 Hours" in July, can help her find some answers.

"Mrs. Wilson feels her daughter's death kind of fell through the cracks of the system," Bass says.

Bass, an easygoing college professor widely regarded as the country's foremost expert in the macabre field of cadaver decay, says he would be happy to help -- if he can.

Wilson does not understand why she was allowed to have most of her daughter's remains buried before a forensic anthropologist could examine them thoroughly.

Rutherford was laid to rest April 29 after Wilson spent two weeks raising money for the funeral. Medical examiners kept all they thought they needed: some skin; part of her brain, throat and pelvic bone; and some ribs.

Wolf, the state's forensic anthropologist, was near death himself when medical examiners called on him to examine Rutherford's remains.

"It was kind of an eyeball sort of thing, no in-depth analysis," chief state medical examiner David Jones says.

Still: "You could hardly help but conclude she was murdered."

Nobody could say what had caused Rutherford's death, however, because her body was so decomposed. There was just enough of Letha Corinne Rutherford left to haunt her mother: "When I found out there had been skin left on the bones, I couldn't sleep for three nights."

Rutherford's bones lay sprawled on the ground like a scrambled question mark when a cousin found her in April. James Hager told police he made the grisly discovery while riding a three-wheeler in a wooded hollow. His father, Jimmy Hager, said Rutherford's bones were covered by tin roofing.

Police say her remains had been dragged into an illegal dump amid garbage, old appliances, bedsprings and lumber.

"We was surprised she was found," says Russell Taylor, Rutherford's next-door neighbor. "We thought she might have took off with some of her kin or something, you know."

It was the first time anyone had reported seeing Rutherford since Dec. 17, when co-workers dropped her off in front of her house at 4245 Dry Branch Road after a day of stripping tobacco on a farm near Jacks Creek.

Rutherford's remains were identified through dental records.

Wolf told medical examiners the case looked complicated and said he would try to run more tests later. But when Wolf died in July, he had not finished the case.

Since Wolf died, Kentucky has been without a forensic anthropologist -- someone who specializes in examining bones. The state's medical examiners are trained to perform autopsies on the soft tissue of corpses.

The search is on to replace Wolf, Jones says. But it's a bad time of year to find a forensic anthropologist for hire. Most teach at colleges. And there aren't that many, anyway. Only about 45 nationwide, Bass says.

The vacancy has not created problems on other cases -- at least so far, Jones says.

From time to time, Kentucky officials have called on Bass for help. But they didn't ask him to look into the Rutherford case. Medical examiners who had assisted Wolf decided it would serve no purpose.

"It was a judgment thing," Jones says, adding that he did not expect any other examiners to turn up new evidence. "But they might."

Jones has invited Bass to make use of Wolf's old office if he comes to Kentucky to examine Rutherford's remains.

Bass is more than willing. "These things are a challenge to me," he says.


What does Wilson hope to find in her daughter's grave? Peace of mind, mostly. Justice, if possible.

Wilson, who is trying to raise $600 or more to have Rutherford exhumed, thinks her daughter was killed because she threatened to tell police about a relative's marijuana crop. Rutherford wanted the marijuana off her property, Wilson says.

Rutherford, who attended Tates Creek and Jessamine County high schools until dropping out in 10th grade, was living on her own in the frame house of her youth.

The house is in a rugged, untamed part of the county -- a little piece of Appalachia just 20 minutes from the office towers and shopping malls of downtown Lexington. Canyons and streams cut through mist-shrouded hills, and the branches of sycamores reach skyward like ghostly fingers.

Not far away is the Kentucky River and the popular Raven Run Nature Sanctuary. But few people who don't live here make it back to Dry Branch Road, a remote, twisted ribbon of asphalt barely wide enough for two cars to pass.

Rutherford had never lived anywhere else. She loved the fighting chickens -- hundreds of them -- that strutted about in the yard.

Her father, Maurice P. "Hoghead" Rutherford, had been quite a cockfighter. Rutherford, a stocky, bearded man with a head several sizes too big for his body and a preference for bib overalls, "looked like some character from back in the old pioneer days or something," neighbor Max Fiscus says.

The elder Rutherford was feared and respected, and he held the family together, Wilson says. But he died of a heart attack in 1990.

"After their dad died, they more or less pushed me out of their lives," Wilson says of her children. "Things just went sour from there."

Wilson told her daughter she was hanging out with the wrong crowd. They were rowdy people, people Letha Rutherford had met at the chicken fights. And they had stopped showing any self control since Hoghead died.

But Letha Rutherford, who had begun drinking heavily and staying out all night, wouldn't listen to her mother. Once a good student, Rutherford started skipping school, then dropped out.

"Her attitude changed after her father died because she knew she could do anything she wanted to," Wilson says. Frustrated, Wilson moved out, leaving her son and daughter alone in the little frame house. That was two years ago. She and her daughter had spoken few times since -- until just before she died.

Wilson called her daughter the day she disappeared. Rutherford was home for dinner, but her friends were waiting outside to take her back to work.

"I asked her how she was getting along," Wilson says. She knew her daughter had big plans. Rutherford had told her mother she wanted to get her high school equivalency diploma and study to be an accountant.

"Letha and I, before she disappeared, we were just getting our mother-daughter relationship back together," Wilson says.

"When she was missing, I was always wondering if she had something to eat or was warm."

1993,

1994,

1995

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